Mold, roaches, disrepair at Quincy's Snug Harbor public housing

Wednesday

Jun 25, 2014 at 7:03 AMJun 25, 2014 at 11:56 AM

Since May, state housing inspectors have documented deplorable conditions and health violations in multiple homes run by the Quincy Housing Authority. Last week, they deemed the 400 units in Snug Harbor as the worst of the 938 state-funded housing units managed by the agency. Officials from the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development cite the housing authority for failing to detect and correct dozens of serious health and safety violations.

Chris Burrell The Patriot Ledger @Burrell_Ledger

Sixta Sanchez isn't afraid to speak up about the mold and the cockroaches she has endured at different times during more than two decades living in the Snug Harbor section of Quincy's public housing complex that lines the riverbanks of Germantown.

“We pay rent here, and we have to live healthy with the children,” Sanchez said Tuesday as she stood outside her apartment under the midday sun.

Since May, state housing inspectors have documented deplorable conditions and health violations in multiple homes run by the Quincy Housing Authority. Last week, they deemed the 400 units in Snug Harbor as the worst of the 938 state-funded housing units managed by the agency.

Officials from the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development also issued a blistering assessment of Quincy, faulting the housing authority for failing to detect and then fix dozens of serious health and safety violations uncovered in recent inspections.

Sanchez and many of her neighbors in Snug Harbor on Tuesday afternoon agreed with the state findings.

“They're not doing what they're supposed to do here,” Sanchez said of the housing authority. “I've had issues with mold and roaches.”

Her 6-year-old son has asthma, which is not uncommon among residents and their children in the Snug Harbor units. Snug Harbor Community School is just around the corner from Sanchez's home and has one of the highest rates of asthma of any school in Quincy. A 2009 report from the State Department of Public Health showed nearly 17 percent of the students there with the respiratory problem that is often triggered by mold.

Heavy mold and mildew, caused by water infiltration, is one of the chief reasons that state inspectors last week ordered a family of three to relocate from a housing authority apartment in Snug Harbor.

Teams from the state housing department have inspected 171 units since June 16 and plan to inspect hundreds more in a “top to bottom” examination of housing conditions.

“The things that I have seen are extremely concerning, and physical conditions are very bad,” James Marathias, the director of facilities maintenance for the state housing agency, said last week. “DHCD remains very concerned with findings at Quincy Housing Authority.”

One of Sanchez's neighbors, who asked not to be named because of fear of reprisal from the authority, said she has asked for months for Quincy Housing Authority to repair her bathroom floor.

“I have been in my apartment for 14 years and my bathroom floor has never been done. The whole thing is covered in duct tape,” the woman said, adding that she was afraid that if she complained, she'd be evicted and end up homeless.

Not far away on Taffrail Road, Elizabeth Marks said that no matter how much she scrubs her bathroom tiles, the mold keeps coming back.

Marks said the problems in her apartment aren't bad compared to others, but the mother of a 15-year-old son said she's exasperated after living in Quincy's public housing for the last 11 years.

“I stopped calling maintenance after a while,” she said as she stood in her kitchen, where many of the floor tiles are broken. “You have to call the health department on them (to get a response).”

Many residents in Snug Harbor said they planned on going to tonight's neighborhood forum at O'Brien Towers to air their concerns about public housing in Germantown.

Chris Burrell may be reached at cburrell@ledger.com or follow him on Twitter @Burrell_Ledger.